


Waiting on an Echo

by Meatball42



Series: Torchwood Oneshots [16]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Episode: s01e12 Captain Jack Harkness, Jack Harkness Backstory, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Star-crossed, Timey-Wimey, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-03 07:40:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5282432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meatball42/pseuds/Meatball42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack’s soulmark is always changing. That doesn’t mean it isn’t right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waiting on an Echo

**Author's Note:**

  * For [the_ocean_weekender](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_ocean_weekender/gifts).



When Jack was born, his soulmark said ‘他是醜’. When he was two, a nanobomb exploded in a quadrant across town, and his mark disappeared.

This is normal.

A week later, once his soulmate’s spirit had been accepted to the afterlife, a new soulmark appeared, this time on his right flank just below the line of his ribs. It said ‘he visto peori’, which his friends liked to tease him about. Jack’s mother told him not to think about it; that the ways of the soul are mysterious, and like to trip us up. (Years later, he would laugh and laugh at this.)

When Jack was eleven, the army base fifteen leagues from their settlement dropped out of time. His soulmark vanished as though it had never been, and running down each side of his spine, as though it had always been there, read ‘a gorgeous, brilliant, smart-arse troublemaker who can NEARLY beat me in a fight. I must have done the Force a good turn in my last life’.

Jack finally met one of his soulmates after he joined the Time Agency. Hailing from the impenetrable atmospheric smog and thousand-night parties of New New New New New New New London, his soulmate was stylish, slick, street-smart, with looser morals than half the criminals they apprehended. Jack didn’t know how or why the universe had paired them together. Maybe it was because they were only soulmates half the time that they didn’t fit as soulmates should, but his partner never seemed to have trouble believing Jack was meant for him.

“Yeah, the marks change, ‘specially when you time-hop as much as we do,” his first soulmate said, stroking the empty space on his chest where Jack’s first words to him were sometimes written. This week’s secondary mark was on the sole of his foot, and read only ‘Huh’. “The future changes, the past changes, but you know what you can rely on: is what’s right in front of you.” He looked straight at Jack. “Whatever this says, or doesn’t say, I know you’re mine.”

Jack would have found that more comforting if his soulmate hadn’t been gesturing to him with a sonic blaster.

Eventually, they parted ways. Jack’s soulmark changed again, and began changing nearly every week, and the words along his spine never came back.

~~~~~

Jack had Suzie’s first words to him on his left kneecap. They stopped showing up a year after she started working for him. He never thought about what it meant. Later he wondered if he should have.

Tosh’s words appeared after he read her file, and disappeared the day he met her. He did think about what that meant, thought about it enough that he shuddered and decided not to think about it anymore.

Jack hired Ianto because ‘Thanks’ is an innocuous soulmark and he didn’t realize it was Ianto’s. He thought he was safe because ‘Jones, Ianto Jones’ had never appeared on his body. It was only when they slept together for the first time and Ianto shivered when Jack touched his words on Ianto’s chest that he realized his mistake.

“Why are they…” Ianto shakes his head, a wrinkle appearing between his eyebrows as he touched ‘There’s your pizza. I’d better go.’ on Jack’s palm, in the same place where he’d seen ‘It’s all right, just breathe deep. I’ve got you’ the day before.

“It’s a side-effect of time travel,” Jack explains. He’s lying on his cot under his office, Ianto sitting beside him with his knees wedged into an awkward corner of the tiny room. Jack stares up as he explains, for the dozenth time over the past several decades, why their words aren’t his even when his words are theirs. “My timeline is constantly in flux, so my soulmarks change with every breath of the universe.”

Ianto shakes his head in wonder. If Jack knows him, he’s thinking either a hundred things, or just one.

~~~~~

‘Thanks’ has been tucked under Jack’s middle finger for about a month and a half straight when he and Toshiko walk into the nineteen-forties. Tosh takes just a minute after realizing where they are to escape to a ladies’ room and check her soulmark. She comes back slowly, face blank with shock.

“It’s gone,” she tells him, blinking slowly at her surroundings. “So… we’re stuck here?” She looks at Jack with wide eyes.

“Not necessarily,” he answers. Jack sometimes feels like a kindergarten teacher, telling children the same things year after year. “Time travel puts your personal timeline in flux. Nothing is set in stone.”

As if to prove it to himself, he looks down at his hand. ‘Thanks’ is gone. Instead, he sees something on his wrist, and pulls up his sleeves to read ‘Sorry about that, the men are a bit lively tonight. It's last day of OTU tomorrow’ in small letters.

A military man. Jack rolls his eyes. Just what they need.

Of course, the dance hall is full of military men. That could be a good sign; maybe they won’t need to go far before finding a way back to the proper time. Or maybe it means they’ll have to stay, and Jack will have to join the military once again.

He’s had more than enough of World War II.

Jack heads toward the bar with Toshiko, wanting to drown out that terrible thought from his mind, while Tosh racks her brain for a way back. When she gets dragged off to dance, he laughs. It’s good for Tosh to have some fun, she’s far too serious. Up until the scene turns ugly, at least.

Jack’s ready for a fight; it might be just what he needs to help him relax before helping Toshiko search the place for a way back. But when ‘George’s Commanding Officer breaks them up, it only takes a moment for Jack to be blindsided by two waves of revelation:

This man is his soulmate, and he is Captain Jack Harkness.

The real one, the one whose name and identity Jack had stolen so long ago, he explains to Toshiko.

The one who dies tomorrow.

He stands on the balcony overlooking the hall. It’s the work of an instant to slip back into the 1940s mindset, the style. Tosh is right to say he fits in here. He knows the lingo, the attitudes, the dress. He has memorized the service record of the man below, the man who he knows-- 1940s mindset, check-- not to watch too closely. Instead, he gazes around as though admiring the decorations, the music, the racousness and underlying fear of joy with a deadline.

That, too, is familiar.

The Captain, the real one, he’s not loud and outgoing, but when he speaks, his men listen, and obey, and sometimes laugh. He has a bashful smile, and dimples, and kind hands, and he’s going to die tomorrow. And somewhere on his body it says ‘Yeah’, a soulmark as innocuous and torturous as ‘Thanks.’

Jack rubs under his middle finger at the blank skin. Soulmarks change all the time. Maybe Captain Jack’s had other words his whole life. Maybe he has a girlfriend, waiting every moment  for his plane to touch down. Maybe his words changed when Jack and Toshiko showed up, and will change again when they leave, and he’ll never know.

Maybe Jack hasn’t made this honorable man’s life a misery, in addition to degrading his legacy.

If it was up to him, they’d stay far away from the Captain, but Tosh needs to speak to a navigator to complete the formula that is their only way home. The other Captain hardly takes his eyes off Jack, offers to buy him a drink. Back in the 21st century, that wouldn’t mean anything, and it doesn’t much here either, but Jack’s gaydar was honed on a planet with a dozen genders, and he knows when someone wants him. The Captain clearly feels drawn to him, the same way Jack was drawn to his name on a list of dead officers, the way he keeps looking back. They say that happens sometimes, with soulmates; there’s a pull to each other, even before the words are spoken.

When Nancy appears, Jack hopes that she’s the real thing, but the interaction between the Captain and the beautiful blonde is awkward and defensive, nowhere near as familiar even as Jack and his first soulmate when they were trying to kill each other.

Still. Better an awkward liaison with a beautiful woman to help seal the Captain’s honor in the eyes of his men, a memory for the girl when the Captain’s plane goes down tomorrow. But when the Captain storms away, Jack is compelled to follow him. He shares one of the sharped edges in his past, one of the most personal memories he has to share.

Jack can’t keep the Captain. He can’t even have him for one night. But he can have him for just one minute, have those eyes on him and nothing else, those eyes that are soft even when they want to be hard.

Jack gives what he can, and the Captain walks away.

Sirens start up, along with the echoes of memory heaped upon memory, all the years Jack’s spent in this time, this place. He closes his eyes for a spare second, pushing back the revulsion. So much death, so much destruction. So many bad memories to taint the precious good ones. Hell, if they have to stick around, he could look up his old friend Algy. Make sure someone has a happy ending.

Jack forces himself back on track. Toshiko is still in danger, here, now, and he can still save her. The occupants of the hall squash in downstairs in the basement. The close quarters make it harder for Toshiko to send the message to their team, but at least she’s on task. Jack can’t help but let his eyes return to Captain Harkness time and time again. The Captain seems to have gotten over his earlier pique, or maybe it’s the soulmate bond, because he keeps gracing Jack with gentle, warm smiles.

And Jack does feel touched with grace every time it happens. This whole evening, for all that he and Toshiko have been trapped in this time, feels touched with fancy, with the good kind of magic, like it’s set apart from the rest of the world. His soulmate feels separate from the rest of the world, like he and Jack are here alone, and all the rest is only backdrop and props.

When the raid is called off, they gravitate together again. The Captain turns away his men in favor of Jack. They sit together, and watch each other for a few moments that feel like years, before glancing, as one, out over the dance floor.

The Captain wants to be closer to Jack. It’s so clear, in his eyes, in the way he leans toward Jack, the way he clumsily prods after Jack’s own availability. It seems like there’s no one else besides the two of them in this wide room of dancing and laughter and solace.

But that doesn’t change anything. They can’t ever be, no matter what the universe is screaming right now. Jack tells the Captain to go to Nancy, to hedge his bets for the end he doesn’t know is coming. It’s the smart move. The best move. He stares at the shining wood of the table and tells himself that, again and again, until it seems real.

And then the Captain comes back.

There’s no going back, after that. The Captain has made his choice, and Jack has never been good at dragging himself away from those few people who shine like stars from the inside. They’re interrupted, and the Captain spooks, but they both know. A few minutes later, Jack watches him cross the dance floor to take a man’s hand, this lonely sweetheart with less than a day’s worth of breaths left in him, and there’s only one option, no matter how dangerous it will make life for him and Toshiko afterwards, no matter that it’s only for one night. There’s no way the Captain could ever not be worth it.

The get a single kiss before the universe pulls them apart.

~~~~~

There’s a lot of clean-up back at the Hub. Toshiko is shaken by the time-jump, but more so by the events that transpired in their absence. Owen is a shaking ball of fury and pain, all mixed together until no one could tell the end from the beginning. Gwen is the usual mix of confused, compassionate, and righteously angry.

Ianto shies away from Jack after greeting him and Toshiko back home. He gives his verbal report to Jack immediately, a requirement when opening fire against a colleague, and then sneaks out of the Hub as soon as reasonably possible, avoiding eye contact the whole way.

Some part of Jack is curious, suspicious, needs to understand his team’s motivations. Some part of him cares.

More of him is devastated. The rest is just tired.

Jack stands on the balcony overlooking the Hub and rubs his blank wrist at the blank skin where words used to be.

~~~~~

One month (and one year) later, standing on the flawless Plass on a sunny day, Jack gets the invitation he’s been waiting on for more than a century. The Doctor looks at him through brown eyes, and Martha waits with a conspiratorial smile where Rose would have cajoled. He looks down at his hands, where gratitude and pizza and the memory of a warm embrace when the darkness released him have been keeping him hoping for the last year. But instead of any of those things, the universe has printed on his wrist an apology in a Texan accent.

He looks up. The Doctor and Martha are wearing twin smirks. Jack ponders his options, then slowly smiles back. “Maybe I could use a vacation,” he says, and Martha grabs his elbow as they walk back to the Tardis.


End file.
